Here's another article I recently wrote for The English Tea Store blog.

In Search of the First Tea Bag Patent
By William I. Lengeman III

There is a commonly accepted tale for the origin of the tea bag, one that I’ve written about at this site and elsewhere. I’ve also seen it mentioned countless other times in many other places. I’ll kick off this article by giving a very brief version of the story. Sometime around 1904 or 1907 or perhaps even 1908, depending on who’s telling the tale, a tea merchant named Thomas Sullivan got the idea to give out samples of his wares in silk bags. Some of his customers got the notion to dip these bags in hot water and thus the humble tea bag was born – for better or worse.

The more I thought about it and dug around a bit, trying to find out more about Sullivan and his “invention,” the more it occurred to me that this seemed like...

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Here's another article I recently wrote for The English Tea Store blog.

Might as Well Face It,
You’re Addicted to Tea
By William I. Lengeman III

Are you addicted to tea? Oh, phooey.

I have to admit that I find it a bit tiresome the way people toss around the word “addiction” so casually these days, often in situations where it simply doesn’t fit. Yeah, you might like chocolate or baseball or anime a whole lot, but it’s highly unlikely that you’re addicted to any of them, at least not given my understanding of what addiction is, as presented way back when, during my school days.

My notion of an addiction to something is whether said thing causes a dependency that results in withdrawal symptoms when you no longer have access to it. But not wanting to trust my recall of a concept first presented to me decades ago, I sought out a proper definition...

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Here's another article I recently wrote for The English Tea Store blog.

In Search of the World’s Oldest Tea Tree
By William I. Lengeman III

Where does your tea come from? Well, to start with it comes from a plant called Camellia sinensis. Statistically speaking, based on production figures, that plant is most likely to reside somewhere in China, India, or Africa. The actual plant the tea was harvested from probably took the form of a small, rather neatly manicured bush. But tea, like so many plants, can grow in the wild as well as in a tea garden or estate, and some of the older tea trees and bushes worldwide tend to have taken on something of a mystique over the years.

Trying to track down the world’s oldest tea tree is doomed to be an exercise in failure, since there may be some incredibly ancient specimen tucked away in a corner of a...

Friday, March 08, 2013

Here's another article I recently wrote for The English Tea Store blog.

On Gloom, Doom, and the End of Tea
as We Know It (Or Not)
By William I. Lengeman III

I’m going to go out on a limb here. I don’t have any special insight into the future, but I’m going to hazard a guess even so. Tea has been with us for many thousands of years and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Although you wouldn’t know it from the “tea is under assault” type articles that seem to turn up in the media with mind-numbing regularity.

I wouldn’t want to disparage the good people who write these articles by saying that they fall into a rather predictable pattern – but they kind of do. It’s goes something like this: A certain huge company that’s best known...

Sunday, March 03, 2013

Here's another article I recently wrote for The English Tea Store blog.

$130 Tea Deconstructed
By William I. Lengeman III

Stop the presses! The word seems to have gotten out not so long ago that a certain well-known French tea retailer was opening a store in New York City and was said to be selling tea for $130 a bag (as one newspaper put it). Gasp!

This tidbit made its way to various media outlets, leading one to believe that said retailer had a hard-working publicist with great connections. But while it might have made for a catchy headline amongst the wider array of sensational headlines we’re barraged with every day, it’s one that bears a bit of examination.

Here's another article I recently wrote for The English Tea Store blog.

5 Things I Wish I’d Known About Tea
By William I. Lengeman III

One does not spring fully formed into this world knowing everything there is to know about tea. It would be nice, but it doesn’t work that way. In my own case I was more than four decades along before I even started drinking the stuff. Then it was quite a few years before I started to pick up on many of these choice little tidbits that follow.

So, here they are, in no particular order of importance. They’re all pretty important, if you ask me...

Friday, March 01, 2013

One of the strange places to drink tea that I wrote about in an article at the English Tea Store blog was a "Tea Party in the Sky" put on by Virgin Balloon Flights. See a clip below and read about all of the places here.